Kabul Movie Houses Take a Break From Insurgents and Chaos

The ticket office at the entrance to Ariana Cinema on December 1, 2010 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Movie tickets are sold from the box office at Pamir Cinema on June 2, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Members of the audience at Ariana Cinema purchase concessions during the intermission in an Indian movie on June 4, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

A matinee of a Pakistani film at Pamir Cinema on November 27, 2010 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The audience in Pamir Cinema during a showing of a Pakistani film on June 2, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

A projectionist at work in the projection room at Temorshahee Cinema on June 5, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

An English-language film reel is stored near the projection room at Ariana Cinema on June 4, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

A projectionist winds a film reel in the projection room at Temorshahee Cinema on June 5, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Members of the audience dance on stage at Pamir Cinema during a Pakistani film on June 2, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Afghans look at movie posters outside of Pamir Cinema on June 17, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

A symptom of the war in Afghanistan is that the images traveling west from the country are often bleak. That has an unintentional distancing effect for audiences, says photographer Jonathan Saruk. He worries that after seeing so many pictures of Afghan drug addicts, jihadists and amputees that people in the United States might be unable to relate to Afghans as people any more.

In 2008 Saruk was embedded with U.S. forces but left to find stories that other journalists were not covering – that gave a more complete picture of life in Kabul. He photographed a game show, a driving school and also the city’s recently resurrected movie theaters.

“I wanted to try and find things that helped bring people a little bit closer to the Afghans and help people to see them in a different light,” he says. “I wanted people to know that they’re not all sitting out in the mountains trying to kill U.S. troops.”

The Taliban outlawed movie theaters in Kabul (along with museums and zoos) from the late ’90s until the group was overthrown in the American-led invasion of 2001. During the ban, many of the buildings had been destroyed along with the film projectors and film archives. Since the American occupation, however, movies have come back and become a gathering spot for young Afghan men (women do not attend, children only rarely).

This resurgence allowed Saruk to capture the perspective he was looking for and potentially pry open a view of the country at large. His intimate photos show crowded theaters with men laughing and buying concessions–movie goers jumping onto the theater stages and dancing along with the Bollywood dancers in the films.

According to Sam French, an American director who has worked extensively in Afghanistan, most of the films screened at the two main movies houses in Kabul are from Pakistan and India. Occasionally he says they show an American movie like Titanic or Rambo III.

French helps run the Afghan Film Project, a non-profit that pairs young Afghan film makers with a host of international film professionals. A recent such collaboration, aided by Afghan-Canadian filmmaker Ariel Nasr, yielded the acclaimed film Buzkashi Boys which is being considered for an Academy Award nomination.

Saruk says the lack of women and children at the theaters is a reminder of the conservative traditions that still govern the country. Nonetheless, he was glad to bring viewers into a country that is often only identified with turmoil and violence.

“Afghanistan is certainly a difficult place, but there are positive things happening there,” he says. “I think it’s been hard for people sitting at home to relate to Afghans so I hope my work shows that they are human too.”

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